Twenty-sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time – September 29, 2024
To really understand today’s Gospel and Jesus’s over-the-top rant, read the verses of Numbers 11 that lead up to today’s first reading pericope. Moses was fed up. He had had enough of leading the people by himself and hearing them complain about not having anything to eat other than manna from heaven. The people wanted meat! God heard and answered. Moses would be given 70 leaders to share his burden, and for the people, God would send enough meat for all to eat for a month.
Now Moses was incredulous. Could God provide that much meat? God would have to slaughter entire herds and catch every single fish in the sea to feed everyone! And God responds: Just wait and see.
Jesus is outraged that any person who has experienced God’s abundant blessings would dare to limit what God could do with those blessings.
That’s the setup for Joshua’s complaint against the two elders who stayed behind and didn’t follow protocol. It’s also the Lectionary context behind Jesus’s hyperbolic rant. The sin here, or scandal (the word used at Mark 9:42 in Greek is skandalon meaning “trap” or “stumbling block”), is not the actions of the two outliers, the rogue exorcist, or the “little ones.”
Jesus is outraged that any person who has experienced God’s abundant blessings would dare to limit what God could do with those blessings. His graphic language, then, reminds us who is truly limited when it comes to showing boundless mercy.
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